The Killing: "Stonewalled"

Season 1, Episode 8

A plot aberration frustrates, while character moments abound

The Facts of the Case are These:

·         Mohammed was the subject of a terrorism investigation

·         In Mohammed’s locked storage room was a bedroom decorated for young girls, and among the items there was a t-shirt that Rosie owned (or the exact same version of the shirt she owned

·         Due to a tap on Bennet’s phone, Holder & Linden now know that he seems to have acquired some (probably fake/illegal) passports

Surprisingly, not much happened this week in the Larsen investigation, and it’s a move that was good for this episode, even if it marked a bad signs for the series as a whole. While I was excited to be spending some time with characters, I also felt a bit frustrated to be suddenly stopped cold on the murder investigation front. The show has been so gung-ho about going non-stop with the investigation, that it seems to have forgotten that it was originally billed as a character study as opposed to a murder mystery. So while I felt happy that the show was finally embracing this aspect, and that this is one of the show’s strongest hours so far, it must be noted that the shift was jarring, and because we haven’t spent that much time getting to know these character, that in some ways, suddenly focusing entirely on them seemed like a bit of a waste of our time.

Nor did it help that the actual bits of movement in the investigation – Rosie perhaps really did know Mohammed, and Bennet keeps looking dirtier and dirtier – similarly felt like a time waster. I’m not saying that Rosie couldn’t have been involved with these two is some particular, illegal sense of the word, but I still don’t believe that either one of them killed her, so the whole terrorist subplot feels like an unnecessary distraction. (Which I more or less predicted would happen last week.) But to suddenly make it seem as if the FBI were going to take over the investigation, and kick Linden and Holder off the case, when we know that it’s never going to be true? Well, now I just know that the show clearly underestimates the intelligence of the average AMC viewer. Because let’s face it, who else is going to watch this thing?

Meanwhile, on the Campaign Trail Less Traveled:

·         With his back against the wall, Darren decided to start playing dirty, and ends up releasing information obtained from Tom Drexler (remember him?) as to Adams’ alleged mistress

·         Darren also attends the parole hearing for his wife’s murderer (manslaughter-er?)

I’m not really sure if this development deserves to stay in this section or be bumped down to the next one, but here it goes: The Richmond campaign storyline has been getting better, but only when it focuses on the character side of things, and even then the moments have to feel fresh in order to be entertaining. So while I appreciate how this episode deftly molded the plot and the character development here tonight by having Darren’s attempts to come back in the race reflects back on the kind of man that he’s become, I’m not quite sure if I like where this is going. Certainly I like the idea of Darren becoming a morally corrupt individual when he started out trying to run a morally clean campaign – is has a certain poetry to it – I’m not sure if I like how it’s being handled. I think both that Darren’s moral change is coming too quick – he just “lost” the election last week for not selling out his morals – and that the show isn’t handling it deftly enough, as evidenced by scene where Darren watches the mistress being harassed by the media, reflecting on the hell he hath wrought on others. It’s a scene we’ve seen played out a thousand times before, and here it just looked hacky and unsubtle.

Nor did Darren’s side trip to the parole hearing add all that much. While it was a great moment for Billy Campbell as he trashed the bathroom, the imagery at play here – the smashed mirror reflecting back a distorted version of his visage, the blood running down his hands – felt way too obvious, and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the whole thing.

And, in the Land of the Forlorn:

While just a few weeks ago I was singing the praises of the Stan/Mitch storyline, claiming it was the most reliable of all the plots in terms of quality, it’s just taken a quick turn in the past week or so, and all I can say is: ohmygod I hate Mitch. Now, I’m generally not one who “hates” television characters; growing up on more traditional drama fare, I had long been accustomed to linking “hate” with the overly bitchy female character or the Machiavellian schemers that I saw populating the air waves, and recognizing that they were there to manufacture drama, I usually just shrugged them off. (I would also point out the futility of hating these characters to my friends whenever they brought it up, but they usually didn’t get what I was saying.)

Yet even when I got older, and just began to find the presence of certain characters grating, regardless of their moral standing, I could usually just shrug this off as I usually see what purpose characters have in a show and just accept that they’re going to be around for a while. (But useless characters? That’s another story.) That’s a long way of saying that I believe that Mitch has earned my wrath, even if it’s for the simple reason that she’s so fucking stupid. Maybe it’s the misogyny inherent in the whole thing, but somewhere between leaving her kids to die from carbon monoxide because she was distracted by a news brief to the fact that she just can’t let Rosie go, Mitch became the stubborn, dumb, stereotypical depiction of the grieving mother that just bugs me to know end. (Yet I still like Stan, mostly because he’s the voice of reason now, so it makes me torn while watching these scenes.)

The other major plotline of course involved Linden and Holder, and for once Holder’s end seemed to hold up better than Linden’s. Though making him an ex-addict isn’t all that original (and I guess we already knew that), I did like the fact that it wasn’t an estranged wife that he was trying to make up to, but rather his sister, who he took for granted so often that she just got sick of his shit.

And far as Linden….Though I appreciate that the show it trying to show how tough all of this is on her by continuing to dump more and more shit into her lap, a lot of this frustration that she’s feeling seems to be based on her original Rick-related stress, and since I could never get behind that, it kind of takes the punch out of the entirely of her ordeal. Add to that the fact that Jack suddenly turned into a real little shit –as opposed to last week, where he was so pathetically helpless – and it all makes for a poor week for a character that I normally enjoy seeing on screen.

Can we just get back to the investigation please?

Quotes, Etc.:

Killer Theory of the Week: Well, once again nothing’s changed, so fuck it. I’m still saying Sen. Eaton

This week in poor police FBI work: An agent leaves Linden alone with the evidence that she is so eager to check out while he goes to check with this supervisor. So much for the power of the chain of command.

Empire Strikes Back is definitely the second movie in the Star Wars saga.